Moving 20 minutes away, need some advice.

[Necrodaemus]

Next week I’ll be moving to a new house that is 20 minutes away.
Fortunately my tank is only a 25g but the stress of everything is still tying my stomach in knots.
The tank is a mixed reef but is SPS dominant though none of the corals are large colonies. There are several that are encrusted to the rock but most of the SPS sticks are epoxied in place and haven’t quite encrusted yet. Live stock is mainly 4 fish (2 clowns, Royal gramma, and six line wrasse), a few trochus snails, 10 hermits and a porcelain crab.
I was thinking of just putting everything in a Rubbermaid tote with a heater, small powerhead and air stone then emptying the display and moving it to the new location, filling it with saltwater and bringing it to temp until I can transport the rocks and livestock. The biggest question I have is regarding the sand. It’s about 1.5” deep (CaribSea Fiji Pink). I’ve heard mixed answers on what to do here…LFS guy said absolutely no to reusing it. I’ve heard other say it’s fine to reuse and then I read the tap water rinse thread (I won’t be able to do that as I won’t have access to a water hose nor the time it takes to completely rinse it).
The tank is only 6 months old and I was thinking of just leaving the sand in the bottom with just enough water to keep it wet during the move. Currently I don’t have issues with nutrients and I actually have to feed really heavy to keep nitrates up to 5-10ppm or dose NeoNitro….I have to dose NeoPhos daily to keep it above 0.
That all being said, if anyone could offer some insight and tips to help make this move smoother, I would be very appreciative!

 

[brandon429]

easy choice

either go with a custom guess option that doesn't have a fifty page move thread of all successful transfers, or use this 50 page thread below to guarantee you a safe transfer:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

The best way to prepare your sand for use in a transferred reef tank, an upgraded reef tank, a reef tank under invasion etc is to put the sand in sections in a bucket and TAP WATER rinse it outside over and over with the garden hose until all the silt / waste is ejected, expect hours of work per...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

snippet from the thread that applies to you:

-rinse either your old sand OR your new bagged sand like we did there, fifty pages, and you would install no unrinsed sand whatsoever. not even one handful from the old tank- 100% rinsed is the way it works. disregard any input to the contrary that doesn't have a giant proof thread. you can see on every page, every job, the sandbed gets rinsed for hours in tap water to evacuate 100% of it's cloud; the final rinse in your case for that sand will be clean saltwater (the final rinse step evacuates tap water out of the sand grains, every job does this)

larger tanks can get away with using RO DI as the final rinse, but nanos need to use saltwater as the final sandbed rinse so that their starting salinity holds accurate when refilled. if a lot of fresh water is in the rinsed sand for a large 200 gallon tank, that much saltwater going in won't be diluted very much with the freshwater rinsed sand.

-do the light ramping: we re acclimate lighting on the transferred tank, it's mentioned hundreds of times there/ on page one

-cover fish during holding so they don't jump

-take time to scrape off algae using a knife from any rocks that may be attached, as you're preparing to move.

-do the rip clean at your old home, as you take down the tank. transport only rip cleaned materials to the new home and set up the new tank with new water as we did for fifty pages. dont transport old unrinsed material then rinse it at the new home.


done, it will skip cycle without bottle bac and without ammonia testing.

 

[90's reefer]

Do the above rinse of just put in new sand. Dont overthink it.
Have your salt water made and ready. Just put the coral in buckets with the old water and go.
I did tbis with my 20g nano and the system was up in a few hours.

 

[Sink_or_Swim]

Everything @brandon429 said - plus expect everything to take twice as long as you think (for this reason I popped a small heater into the Brute tubs holding my live rock and fish, so the water didn't get too cold. I was only transferring to a new tank in the same room, and the rock and livestock had to sit in buckets/tubs for at least 3-4 hours while I set up the new tank and filled it... you don't want anything getting cold. Also I ran an airstone in each container). Wishing you luck!

 

[Acros]

I moved my acro dominant 25g across states in Dec 2020. Here is what I did.

Use 5g buckets, not a tote. Buckets are easy to carry. I placed 1-2 rocks/bucket so that the corals won’t bump into the sides or each other.

Use a pump and heater in each bucket to keep heat when waiting at the old house and once you reach the new house. If they have heat and flow, you can put together your tank, stand and all equipment without rushing. My temp only dropped to 76f after a 2.5 hour drive to the new place. Since I had heat and water movement, I could wait to unload everything from the truck before worrying about the tank.

You don’t have to add all sand back the same day. I did it over the course of a few weeks. I would take a small bit of sand, rinse it and add back to the tank.

 

[fish farmer]

I personally like using plastic coolers, big and small for moving and holding livestock.

They are insulated, rugged and have handles. Just make sure the drain plugs are tight if they have one.

 

[o2manyfish]

I think for a tank this size you are overthinking it. I speak from the experience of moving lots of tanks, and handling 10s of thousands of corals.

If it's only 20 miles, then with some thoughtful planning, and some friends help. You should be able to drain the tank water into buckets. Have someone head to new house with the water.

Take papertowels and soak in the tank water and drape over the rocks and corals.

Get a couple of friends with good backs and just lift the tank with the rock and the sand and move it into the back of a heated SUV.

Drive to the new house. Put the tank in the new house. Put a dish in the bottom of the tank and start adding the water back into the tank pouring it into the bowl to not disturb the sand.

With a couple of friends help, and everything prepped to go. This could be an hour project. With the only cost being maybe some new water and some paper towels.

(When the water drains out of the tank you should be able to catch the fish in the minimal water remaining and move them to a bucket of water).

Dave B

 

[brandon429]

I want the invasion cleanup job if he selects that way (he'd still follow the original directions, only this time during a stress event)

It risks killing his tank with an enduring gha or cyano outbreak from moving all his waste over/ no benefit in doing that. There's a reason all rinseless transfers are verbal relays vs a thread with trackable outcomes, they're all positive all the time when there's nothing to click

When its a readable thread, we get sometimes the fish kills listed on page one under the warning collection (unrinsed tanks)

In the end, that's taking a willing risk with someone else's reef tank cash, to advise to skip the prep safety rinses.

 

[brandon429]

Not to overstate the risk as well, my proposed % breakdown risk:

Doing nothing but draining and simply moving the tank and setting it back up with no waste removal: 95% likely to transfer safely with no fish or coral death. Within the 5% you get extended invasion issues and mixed degrees of fish kills. I can't have one of every twenty tank moves in the thread mad at me so we recommend the 100% safe option, every time since it's so easy to run on a small tank.

Either way sliced, that waste in the bed is stratified and will be un stratified at the end, that ages the tank towards old tank syndrome. To remove all waste de- ages the tank, the long game benefits are noted as well

 

[Necrodaemus]

I moved my acro dominant 25g across states in Dec 2020. Here is what I did.

Use 5g buckets, not a tote. Buckets are easy to carry. I placed 1-2 rocks/bucket so that the corals won’t bump into the sides or each other.

Use a pump and heater in each bucket to keep heat when waiting at the old house and once you reach the new house. If they have heat and flow, you can put together your tank, stand and all equipment without rushing. My temp only dropped to 76f after a 2.5 hour drive to the new place. Since I had heat and water movement, I could wait to unload everything from the truck before worrying about the tank.

You don’t have to add all sand back the same day. I did it over the course of a few weeks. I would take a small bit of sand, rinse it and add back to the tank.

I actually like this idea on gradually adding sand back. My sand is actually pretty clean and gets regularly stirred by nessarius and conch snails as well as area siphoned when I do water changes. I very well may just scoop it all out and save it in a bucket to gradually rinse and add back. I’ll definitely need to add some to an area at first as to give the nessarius and conchs places to burrow.

 

[Necrodaemus]

Not to overstate the risk as well, my proposed % breakdown risk:

Doing nothing but draining and simply moving the tank and setting it back up with no waste removal: 95% likely to transfer safely with no fish or coral death. Within the 5% you get extended invasion issues and mixed degrees of fish kills. I can't have one of every twenty tank moves in the thread mad at me so we recommend the 100% safe option, every time since it's so easy to run on a small tank.

Either way sliced, that waste in the bed is stratified and will be un stratified at the end, that ages the tank towards old tank syndrome. To remove all waste de- ages the tank, the long game benefits are noted as well

The sand in my tank is stirred up very frequently by nessarius and conch snails that burrow every night and emerge daily. The only places where detritus may be trapped is around the edges of the rocks. I also have my powerheads programmed to run full blast every night to create a “cleaning storm” to dislodge debris from rocks and substrate to help get it into the water column to filter it out.